February 13, 1962The Mother
Agenda
Volume 3
February 13, 1962
(After listening to Satprem read several Playground Talks1 to be published in the Ashram Bulletin.)
It's easy reading, it won't tax their brains.
Still, it's worth saying.
Actually, I have noticed one thing: nowadays if I spontaneously say something the way I see it, without trying to adapt myself to people, they don't understand – it's difficult to understand. And I am not speaking of people who know nothing, but of those who have lived and thought with me.
My vision of things – the SAME things – has become very, very different. Very different. When you read these Talks to me it's exactly as though I were listening to someone else saying things – I am transported back into a different person's consciousness. But at least it's accessible, while now....
At that time, I had the sense of a “higher way of living”: I used to make a distinction between different ways of life. Now this so-called higher way of living seems so miserable to me – so petty, mean, narrow – that I very often find myself in the same position as those who ask, “But is there really something to it?” And I understand them (even though I have a different will and vision of something to come that is not yet here), I understand the feeling of those who came into contact with spiritual life and asked, “What good is it – what good is it? Is there anything worth living in it?” We are NECESSARILY hemmed in, bound to live in narrowness and pettiness simply to keep alive, for the sake of all the body's needs.
It takes such an effort to bring Light into this poverty, to bring a Force, a Reality, a Power, something, good Lord, something TRUE! Through constant effort and will, constant tension, suddenly, ah! I get two or three seconds... and then it all ebbs away again.
In that former illusion, there were noble actions, generous actions, great, heroic actions, all adding color to life and capable of giving you some interesting hours. Now that too is gone: I see it all as childishness.
I understand very well that this present state is necessary for getting out of it. For as long as something seems normal, natural, acceptable, there's no escaping it. You have one life on the side and then “this” [the life in the body], that's the way people with a spiritual life always lived: they had their spiritual life and let “this” continue on automatically, without attaching any importance to it – it's very easy.
But what a relief to live the Truth at each instant!...
I haven't yet found the way.
It will come.
Voilà, petit.
But will this present period between the old world and the other last a long time? There's nothing in between....
Not for the moment.
There's nothing, it's like a no-man's-land. You're no longer on this side and....
...And you aren't yet on the other. Yes, that's it.
So the tendency is always to step back and go within. But that's not the way! It's a natural movement, but I clearly see that it's false.
Both were there this morning.
Obviously a great, great deal of stability and inner calm is required.... There was a keen sense of the absolute pettiness, stupidity and dullness of all outer circumstances, of this whole bodily life in its external form, and AT THE SAME TIME a great symphony of divine joy. And both states were together like pulsations.
But it makes your head spin. You have to be very careful, it... it makes you giddy!
I can't express it – the minute you try to express it, most of it evaporates. And even if I did tell what little I could, surely a good nine and a half people out of ten would say, “She's batty!” If I spoke to the people here that way, they would probably say, “She's soft in the head!”
Strange. This morning it was strange, for both were there: the feeling of physical weakness – almost a physical decomposition – and AT THE SAME TIME, SIMULTANEOUSLY (not even one behind the other, but both together), a glory of divine splendor.
Both together.
Both together.
I always have the most acute experiences when I am getting ready to go down for the balcony [darshan]. That's when they come, during the most prosaic part of daily life. When I am meditating or walking or even seeing someone, it's different: physical things fade away, they lose their significance. But in this case, it's when I am in the very midst of physical life.
It was odd this morning because on one side I felt (“one side” – it's not even a side; I don't know how to explain, they are both together) the body was unwell, most unharmonious (someone in an ordinary consciousness would have said the body was ill, or at any rate very weak, very... not at all in good condition), and simultaneously, in the SAME PHYSICAL SENSATION: a glory! A marvelous glory of blissfulness, joy, splendor!... But how could the two be together?
Really, you must stay perfectly, perfectly calm inside; externally, you do things, brush your teeth and so forth, but within you must keep very calm if you don't want to fall over.2
But what prevents the two from joining?
It's not a joining. It's not a joining: one is to replace the other.
But the other....
You see, it's like trying to alter the functioning of the organs. What is the process? Already the two are beginning to exist simultaneously.... What does it take for one to disappear and the other to remain on its own, changed?... Changed, because as it is now it wouldn't be enough to make the body function; the body wouldn't perform all the things it must perform, it would stay in a blissful state, delighting in its condition, but not for long – it still has a lot of needs! That's the trouble. It will be very easy for those who come in one or two hundred years; they will only have to choose: not to belong to the old system any more or else to belong to the new.3 But now.... A stomach has got to digest, after all! Well, that will mean a new way of adapting to the forces of Nature, a new functioning.
But for that to happen, some beings would have to prepare this new functioning.
Sometimes I wonder if it's not sheer folly to attempt it.... Shouldn't this body simply be left to dissolve and let others, better fit for the new functioning, be prepared? I don't know.
I don't know. No one has ever done this before, so there's no one to tell me.
So my solution is always the same: I am like this (gesture of surrender), the body saying, “I am quite willing to try, I am trying my best.”
Is it folly, or is it really possible?... I don't know.
But long ago there was a knowledge like that – all the ancient scriptures mention it.
I believe so. I believe so.
I feel a very strong need for someone who knows.
Yes, I too have quite often thought that someone should come here who....
...who knows.
Who knows something.4
That's what I was expecting from Sri Aurobindo.
But he himself was searching. Had he continued, he probably would have found it.... But obviously it wasn't possible.5
For he never said he didn't know.
He never said he didn't know.6
He always told me, “Each thing in its own time.”
But if he knew, he will be able to tell me. So it means it isn't time yet. Because I am with him consciously, mon petit, every
night for hours – two hours of my night, at least – not joined to him, with him: like someone I see and talk to and who talks to me.
Again last night....
And he purposely doesn't want me to note down what he says. For I could do so (if I had time) very early in the morning; I remember very, very clearly and precisely. Later it fades, it's erased... only the impression or influence remains and it's very strong all day until it's replaced by another. This creates a sort of atmosphere in which I live, an atmosphere of knowledge.
But he doesn't want me to note it down. It's not simply that I don't have the time, he doesn't want me to. When I wake up (not “wake up,” when I come out of that state), there are no lapses of consciousness. This is something I have acquired through lifelong discipline – I have no lapses. Things don't suddenly go away, poof! They remain very clear – I go from one state to another with no impression of a gap. But I see his action: he replaces the precise memory of what has been said and done by a sort of atmosphere, a sensation that stays with me all day long.
Sometimes a particular image lingers, as a key to the atmosphere.
It was so lovely last night!... We had come upon a region all mantled in snow, pure white, and all the arctic animals were there. He wore a white robe. I walked by his side, and he began to repeat my mantra, saying, “See how it is....” Glorious!
And the animals – the animals and all the things receiving the Influence [of the mantra] and changing....7
What remains is an impression, not the precise knowledge.
(silence)
It may come... if I am given the time.
Oh, it's people's thoughts that are so annoying! Everybody, everybody is constantly thinking about old age and death, and death and old age and illness... oh, they're such a nuisance! Me, I never think of it. That's not the question. The difficulty lies in the Work itself; it doesn't depend on a certain number of years, which besides is completely... it's nothing, one second in eternity, a mere nothing!
But truly, if someone (I don't know who or what this “Someone” is)... if I am given the time, I will know – I am convinced of it.
For despite all the growing difficulties, there is also a growing knowledge, a constant progress. So from that standpoint, I CANNOT be mistaken; it is impossible. This Presence is becoming so concrete and so (what shall I say?)... so helpful, so concrete in its help.
But it obviously takes a long time.
1 From 1951 to 1958, Mother gave regular talks at the Ashram Playground. These talks were later published under the title Questions and Answers.
2 This is exactly one month before the first radical turning point in Mother's yoga.
3 Decidedly, Mother could imagine only one possible choice!
4 In fact, in the Agenda conversations of 1958 and '59 (never noted by Satprem because he believed them too “personal”), Mother mentioned this as one of the main reasons for encouraging his tantric discipline. He even set out for the Himalayas, like a knight of yore, with the idea of bringing back to Mother the secrets of transformation; and Mother indicated to him the spot where one of her former bodies lay in a Himalayan cave, petrified by a mineral spring. But the secret of the new species can manifestly not be found through any “trick” tantric or otherwise – one's very nature must change. No one could help Mother because if someone “knew,” it would already be done.
5 Mother means that it wasn't possible for Sri Aurobindo to continue.
6 In a letter dated August 16, 1935, Sri Aurobindo writes: “Now I have got the hang of the whole hanged thing – like a very Einstein I have got the mathematical formula of the whole affair (unintelligible as in his own case to anybody but myself) and am working it out figure by figure.”
7 Once again, it is interesting to note that animals or plants, even “things,” seem to respond to the influence more readily than men.